Breaching the Public Trust…Is There a Recovery?

By Sherwin Pomerantz

Israel’s current parliament voted itself out of existence this week in the run-up to elections which are now scheduled for January 22^nd.  The Prime Minister, unable to patch together sufficient support to pass a budget decided this was the only way to solve the problem and, having sufficient votes to move in that direction, the die is now cast.  In reaction and in preparation for the elections, some interesting events have taken place this week.

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The Shas party, which represents the political wing of the Sephardi orthodox community whose philosophical head is the venerable Rabbi Ovadia Yossef, has decided to revamp its leadership.  Where for the past few years Deputy Minister and Minister for Internal Affairs Eli Yishai has headed the political arm of the party, in the coming election the leadership will be shared among three people.  Yishai will be one, Housing Minister Ariel Attias will be the second, and Aryeh Deri will be the third.

You may remember Deri’s name.  In 2000 he was convicted of taking $155,000 in bribes, committing fraud and breach of public trust while serving as Interior Ministry and was given a three year jail sentence as his punishment.  He was released in 2002 after serving 22 months with time off for good behavior.   Current polls show that the position of Shas in the next government will be strengthened by the addition of Deri to the ticket, the same Deri who was earlier convicted of a breach of the public trust.

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Former Prime Minister and former Mayor of Jerusalem Ehud Olmert has also announced that he is thinking about running for Prime Minister again in the next election at the head of a new centrist party and has just agreed to cooperate with former Kadima head Tzipi Livni as well.  They have also agreed not to compete with each other.

You will also remember Olmert.  He was forced from power a few years ago when there were suspicions that he had misused the power of his office for his personal benefit.  He was tried and the court also found him guilty of breach of trust but, somehow or other was given a relatively light sentence and fined somewhat less than $18,000 and a one year suspended sentence.  The state prosecutor, incensed at the light sentence, is considering an appeal on behalf of the state of Israel.

Current polls show that a centrist party headed by Olmert, the same Olmert convicted of breach of the public trust, might edge out the Likud party headed by Bibi Netanyahu.

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On Tuesday of this week Jerusalem police arrested Anat Hoffman, the leader of Women of the Wall, a group that defends the right of women to pray at the Western Wall. Her offense?  She was leading a group of women [many of whom were in Israel to celebrate Hadassah’s 100th Year anniversary] in the public vocal recitation of the Shma, the twice daily reaffirmation of our allegiance to God and his laws.  The official charge was “singing out load at the Kotel and disturbing the peace.”

As a result, she was kept in jail overnight in a cell with a prostitute and some other low life, had to sleep on the floor and was passed food on a tin plate under the door at feeding time (her description of the time there).  She was finally released the following morning and ordered to stay away from the Western Wall for 30 days.

Anat Hoffman served for 14 years as a member of the Jerusalem City Council and is the executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center, the legal and advocacy arm of the Reform Movement in Israel.  The Women of the Wall Group which she heads has been battling for many years for the right of women to pray publicly at the Western Wall wearing tallitot (i.e. prayer shawls) along with a number of other issues the group considers critical to religious life in a democracy.

The courts earlier deemed it impermissible for women to wear men’s tallitot at the Western Wall just as it supports the equally insane law that makes it illegal for Jews who ascend the Temple Mount to actually pray there, lest our Arab cousins be offended.

Conclusion

Looking at all that has happened in this space over the past week, I don’t think it is a stretch to conclude that a country that permits people who have been convicted of breach of the public trust to re-enter national politics (and even have a reasonable chance of “going for the gold”) while arresting a fellow Jew for reciting the Shma out loud at the Kotel or preventing any Jews from praying on the Temple Mount, has totally lost its moral compass.

This is a time in world history where we are actively engaged in moral conflicts on so many fronts.  As such it behooves all of us not to remain silent in the face of such outrageous acts.

Martin Luther King Jr. had it right when he said “The hottest place in hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.”